Several different electron emission devices have been proposed and implemented to create electron emissions useful for displays or other electronic devices such as storage devices. Traditionally, vacuum devices with thermionic emission such as electron tubes required the heating of cathode surfaces to create the electron emission. The electrons are drawn in a vacuum space to an anode structure that is at a predetermined voltage potential to attract the electrons. For a display device such as a cathode ray tube, the anode structure is coated with phosphors such that when an electron impinges on the phosphor, photons are generated to create a visible image. Cold cathode devices such as spindt tips (pointed tips), which use electric field emission, have been used to replace the hot cathode technology. However, it has been difficult to reduce the size and integrate several spindt tips while maintaining reliability. As the size is reduced, the spindt tip becomes more susceptible to damage from contaminants in the near vacuum space that are ionized when an electron strikes them. The ionized contaminants are then attracted to the spindt tip and collide with it, thereby causing damage. To increase the life of the spindt tip, the vacuum space must have an increasingly higher vacuum (that is, remove the contaminants). A flat emitter having a larger emission surface than spindt tip emitters can be operated reliably at lower vacuum requirements. However, for some applications, the amount of current density from conventional flat emitters is not high enough to be useful. Thus a need exists to create a flat emitter that has high current density that is also able to operate reliably in low vacuum environments.